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Russia Has Constructed Massive Underground Shelters In Anticipation Of Nuclear War

Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the Ural mountains that has been estimated to be approximately 400 square miles in size?

Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the Ural mountains that has been estimated to be approximately 400 square miles in size? In other words, it is roughly as big as the area inside the Washington D.C. beltway. Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration was deeply concerned about the construction of this enormous complex deep inside Yamantau mountain, but they could never seem to get any straight answers from the Russians. The command center for this complex is rumored to be 3,000 feet directly straight down from the summit of this giant rock quartz mountain. And of course U.S. military officials will admit that there are dozens of other similar sites throughout Russia, although most of them are thought to be quite a bit smaller. But that is not all that the Russians have been up to. For example, Russian television has reported that 5,000 new emergency nuclear bomb shelters were scheduled to have been completed in the city of Moscow alone by the end of 2012. Most Americans don’t realize this, but the Russians have never stopped making preparations for nuclear war. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has essentially done nothing to prepare our citizens for an attack. The assumption seems to be that a nuclear attack will probably never happen, and that if it does it will probably mean the end of our civilization anyway.

Needless to say, the Russians are very secretive about their massive underground facility at Yamantau mountain, and no American has ever been inside. The following is what Wikipedia has to say about it…

Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery as recently as the late 1990s, during the time of Boris Yeltsin’s government after the fall of the Soviet Union. Two garrisons, Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, were built on top of the facility, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, as well, and became the closed town of Mezhgorye in 1995. They are said to house 30,000 workers each. Repeated U.S. questions have yielded several different responses from the Russian government regarding Mount Yamantaw. They have said it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war. Responding to questions regarding Yamantaw in 1996, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated: “The practice does not exist in the Defense Ministry of Russia of informing foreign mass media about facilities, whatever they are, that are under construction in the interests of strengthening the security of Russia.” Large rail lines serve the facility.

Back in 1996, the New York Times reported on the continuing construction of this site. U.S. officials were quite puzzled that the Russians were continuing to build it even though the Cold War was supposedly over at that point…

In a secret project reminiscent of the chilliest days of the cold war, Russia is building a mammoth underground military complex in the Ural Mountains, Western officials and Russian witnesses say.

Hidden inside Yamantau mountain in the Beloretsk area of the southern Urals, the project involves the construction of a huge complex served by a railroad, a highway and thousands of workers.

Within the U.S. intelligence community, there was a tremendous amount of debate at that time regarding the purposes of this facility, but what everyone agreed on was that it was going to be absolutely massive…

A report in Sovetskaya Rossiya said the project involves construction of a railroad, a modern highway and towns for tens of thousands of workers and their families.

“The complex is as big as the Washington area inside the Beltway,” said an American official familiar with intelligence reports.

In 1998, in a rare public comment, then-Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Gen. Eugene Habinger, called Yamantau “a very large complex — we estimate that it has millions of square feet available for underground facilities. We don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing there.”

It is believed to be large enough to house 60,000 persons, with a special air filtration system designed to withstand a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Enough food and water is believed to be stored at the site to sustain the entire underground population for months on end.

A few years after that, in 2003, there was an article in the Washington Post by Bruce G. Blair in which Yamantau was mentioned as a potential key target for U.S. nuclear war planners…

Die-hard [U.S.] nuclear war planners actually have their eyes on targets in Russia and China, including missile silos and leadership bunkers. For these planners, the Cold War never ended. Their top two candidates [i.e., targets] in Russia are located inside the Yamantau and Kosvinsky mountains in the central and southern Urals.

Both were huge construction projects begun in the late 1970s, when U.S. nuclear firepower took special aim at the Communist Party’s leadership complex. Fearing a decapitating strike, the Soviets sent tens of thousands of workers to these remote sites, where U.S. spy satellites spotted them still toiling away in the late 1990s.

But the Russians have not just been building giant underground facilities deep in the Urals.

They have also been constructing thousands of new underground bomb shelters in major cities such as Moscow.

Nearly 5,000 new emergency bomb shelters will be built in Moscow by 2012 to save people in case of potential attacks.

Moscow authorities say the measure is urgent as the shelters currently available in the city can house no more that half of its population.

In the last 20 years, the area of air-raid defense has been developed little, and the existing shelters have become outdated. Moreover, they are located mostly in the city center,which makes densely populated Moscow outskirts especially vulnerable in the event of a nuclear attack.

In order to resolve the issue, the city has given architects a task to construct a typical model of an easy-to-build shelter that will be located all over the city 10 to 15 meters underneath apartment blocks, shopping centers, sport complexes and parks, as in case of attack people will need to reach the shelters within a minute.

Though the bunkers are supposed to be designed to shelter the population in the event of a nuclear attack, government officials say it’s only a precaution and they do not expect such an attack or nuclear outbreak (e.g. Chernobyl) to occur. Neither RT or the Russian government provided estimates for the cost of the facilities. A Popular Mechanics article that reviewed a number of different types of bunkers and building practices had varying prices depending on the type of shelter. Since the proposed Russian bunkers would hold roughly 1000 people each (based on the population count and other details), one could estimate that the lowest price point for a bunker this size, with basic necessities like bathrooms and reserve food for a day or two, may run in the area of around $100,000 – $200,000. This would put a conservative price tag for 5000 shelters anywhere from half a billion to a billion dollars. A significant investment, indeed.

So what about us?

Has the U.S. government constructed any bunkers for the survival of the general population in the United States?

Of course not. In the event of a nuclear war, I guess they just expect pretty much all of us to die.

Should we go the Mutually Assured Destruction route, this might work for Russians as they are use to having no freedom. They would not likely have as much problem living underground because after all they could not come up. How do they prepare for food stuffs, vegetables etc. The Russians are not religious zealots like the towel heads, so I’m not sweating the small stuff at the moment. Remember it’s all small stuff. xoxo J.C.